Straight No Chaser

The following videos make me smile. You should take a few minutes and watch them.

Gar Turns ONE!

This little man loves his grandpa, who loves him just as much if not more.

He started out just using one finger.

Then his whole hand. 

Then the spoon

He had cake EVERYWHERE!

Even in his eyes.

He wasn't sure about opening presents and got a lot of help.

Here he is with his two best helpers. They are all less than four months apart.

I can't believe my baby is already a year old. It freaks me out to think about it. I still feel like he is a little baby. Even though he can do way more than a little baby can.

He is so much fun. He has a sparkle in his eye and makes everyone smile. I am the luckiest Mom ever!!

PS Doing a one-year-old's birthday at the park may not be the best plan if you intend for them to dig into their cake. Luckily, I did think to grab some wet rags.

Clint's Birthday

Clint had a pretty lame birthday this year. I think he worked all day and then came home and we went to dinner with his family. Poor guy has pretty boring birthdays. One of these years I will pull off a fun day for him.

I couldn't decide what to get him. If he ever wants something, he goes and buys it. I actually could have come up with something if I had the funds. Well, I finally decided on what to get him. I knew that his combination license had expired and so he probably hadn't bought his elk tag. Perfect! I decided just to get both for him. I was so excited to give it to him. I knew he would be surprised, which I never manage. The night before I was cleaning up the kitchen and there was a license on the counter. I had looked at it a few times and it was expired so I almost threw it in the garbage but I decided to wait and make sure he didn't need it for something. I think I asked if he just wanted me to throw it away and he says something like, "No, that is my current one." Wait. What!?! Yeah he had bought it. I had checked online to see if he had bought it and it didn't say he had one and they let me buy it at the store so I thought for sure he didn't have one. So I went and got the one I bought and gave it to him right then. I asked when he had bought it. He told me he had to have it to buy his elk tag. :( I was so bummed the same thing had happened with the elk tag. So I went and got that and gave it to him too. That was all I had planned for presents so he didn't get to open a single present. Major bummer especially for someone who likes to open presents.

His birthday cake is pretty sad looking. I thought it would be fun to make him a fun cake this year. So he was surprised by that I guess. Too bad I only took like one minute to decorate it so it doesn't look that great.

The kids were so cute singing happy birthday this year. I think we spent at least five minutes singing to him. Even Gar joined in. We even had a contest to see who could sing that loudest. I am so glad that we have a video camera to capture all those fun memories!!

How I looked at that license and figured it was expired is beyond me. Unless when I looked at it I had in my head that this year is 2011 instead of 2010. *shrugs*

Lake Powell 2010

If you know me very well, you know I am not a water person. I really wasn't excited to go to Lake Powell this year. I just knew it would be hot and none of us would sleep well and we would all be ornery. Clint made some point about regretting making our kids miss out on fun things or something. So we all went. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. Actually we all had a lot of fun. It wasn't too hot either. It stormed quite a bit. It was kind of funny because Clint told me we wouldn't want jackets or blankets. haha We needed both. ( I snuck them into our stuff when he wasn't watching thank goodness)

This was probably within five minutes of getting on the houseboat. He loved playing with the steering wheel. I don't think he got bored the whole time we were down there.

Wyatt loved helping to drive and I think helped Grandpa every time we moved.

(we moved every day)

Kale's first fish of the trip.

These three were so cute watching....

these four.

Here's Kale's big catfish. It was so funny. He was trying to hold it while I took a picture but it kept slipping out of his hands. He probably dropped it on its head five times before we got a decent picture.

Here's Wyatt's first fish. He wanted to be like the big boys so bad!

This was Clint's biggest carp of the trip. You can tell how impressed Wy is. haha But this also shows just how big it really was.

Can you see the kids up there? There are four of them. I had to put my other lens on my camera to be able to even tell who was who up there.

My children do not take after me. They are all little water babies. Gar loved it and would just crawl straight into the water until the little waves would get in his face and I would bring him out.

He actually caught this catfish on his fishing pole but it was so big and fighting so hard that he couldn't get it in. So we grabbed his spear pole and someone held the fishing pole and he jumped in and speared it. It was the biggest catfish of the trip. I was going to post a different picture of Clint with this fish because the look on his face is so cute. He looks like a little kid but I knew someone would say something and I would get in trouble. But he was so excited about that fish!!

These were all the catfish he caught our last night there. He wanted a bragging picture to show his friends up here that he goes catfishing with. When they go they don't catch much and when they do they are pretty little. At least compared to these. 

The last morning we were sitting out on the front eating breakfast and the carp were swimming right by the boat. Wy wanted to catch one so bad. I tried but couldn't get one to take the hook. I went and got Clint and he helped and this is what they got. He is seriously too cute!! And you can tell he warmed up to being around the fish by the end.

As I am sure you can tell by these pictures they did a lot of fishing. I think at least one person was fishing from the time we got up till we all went to bed.

We kept life jackets on the kids pretty much the entire time we were down there. Kale and Darc were so comfortable playing in the water they would just swim around. Wy wasn't sure and wanted to be able to touch until the last two or three hours we were there. While they took the houseboat back where it was supposed to be we played in the water (it was way too hot to just sit out on the beach) And Wyatt finally got comfortable enough to swim around a little.

It was really a lot of fun. I loved watching my kids have so much fun!! Thanks Lloyd and Kalynn for the trip!!

Happy Birthday Darcy!

Darcy girl turned FOUR this year. I am still freaked out by it. For her birthday I decided to ask her Aunts to do her nails and her hair. I thought it would be a fun way to make her feel special. But she also had to take a nap since I wanted a happy birthday girl instead of an ornery one. Of course I had to wake her up from her nap to get her nails done and she doesn't do so well when getting woken up. She wasn't nearly as excited as I thought she would be.

Thanks Aunt Tawna for the pretty nails. She even put cute flowers on some.

(see her crooked little finger? She gets that from her dad. A lot of the Bartons -at least Clint siblings- have that crooked little finger. I have looked at it so many times and thought it was broken. Her brothers have it too but I think that one is the worst)

Thanks Aunt Lisa for the pretty hair. I LOVE her hair like this don't you?

She must have been wearing something pink when I took her to get her hair done...actually that is sounding kind of familiar. I think I made her change....

Here's her sad excuse for a cake. It actually doesn't look quite as bad in this picture as it actually was. I just couldn't get those darn cupcakes to stack nicely for the life of me.

This is a picture of her with her new chair and the babies she got.

She managed to mess her hair up before the party. :(

She had lots of helpers helping open her presents and standing in the way so I didn't get any other good pictures.

First Fishing Trip of 2010

We took the kids fishing a few times this summer. These pictures are from our first trip of the year.

This kid is so funny. He used to eat EVERYTHING! You can see he is on a blanket but he would just scoot to where he could get the dirt and sticks to eat. At first I tried to stop him but he always managed to get to the dirt so I just stopped. He always had a faceful of dirt if we were outside. I know people thought I was nuts but I couldn't just sit and hold him 24/7. Especially since he is such a mover. But hey at least he will have some great immunities right?

She probably spent a half an hour sliding down this little hill.

We jokingly told him he needed to gut the fish. He was so cute and just did it. He gutted all of the fish that day.

I lost my wedding band in this area two years ago. I had always hoped someone would take a metal detector up and see if they could find it. No one ever did until, I think it was, this trip. Clint brought his this time. I didn't think there was any way he would actually find it but HE DID! I think that is the best find he will ever make with a metal detector. :)

Ya'll ready for this?

I spent some time this morning resizing all the pictures that I want to put on here. I keep feeling guilty for not blogging. I know that I probably shouldn't but I do. So now I have no more excuses. Ok not having the internet at home is a GREAT excuse but I am around it enough that I can easily update. And as soon as I am current then maybe it will be easier for me to keep you all up to date.
I will breaking up my posts into events. You are in for a treat there are only like 80 something pictures I want to post. That's what I get for missing three birthdays and vacation, Easter, and all our other Summer events. So here we go...

I wanted to surprise the kids and get them chickens for Easter again. Clint decided not to wait till Easter and one night just packed us all up and went and bought them. But of course we couldn't just get chickens. That would be far too boring. So we ended up with five chickens, two ducks and two turkeys. Sadly, something got two of the chickens. It is ok though, that's life right? We still get up to five eggs a day between the remaining birds.

He was only trying to kiss the cute little chickie, not eat it. This is the one the kids decided could be his.

This one was Darcy's. I can't remember what she named it. She was coming up with some pretty wild names for a while. Most of them sounded like Japanese names.

I told him to show me his chicken. I did get one where you can see his face but I thought this one was pretty cute, it just reminds me of the cute little things that kids do. He named his "Duck"

I don't know why I didn't get one of Kale and his duck who he named, "Dark". It is a brown duck so it fits pretty good. They all had to pick one that could be their very own. Gar and Darcy's chickens were the ones that died. Actually we thought Wy's was going to too but after a few days it was as good as new. And we get the most eggs out of her.

This year it was a must to color on each egg before it was dyed.

We went to the annual Hunting family Easter egg hunt again this year. It was sad that we missed out last year. I love taking the kids. I thought I got a picture of Garrett but apparently I didn't. He just hung out with Grandpa in the truck. You can tell by the winter coats that it was still a bit chilly.

Once again, I did get a better picture of Kale but I love his face in this one. You can just see how excited he is to get all the candy and treasures.

Here's Darc with her "big" present. When we were kids we used to get a big candy but now as parents we have decided to start giving a toy or something. You can see by her basket she isn't missing out on the treats. And this was only the first of three Easter egg hunts.

That is Aunt Danielle helping Wy. I am not sure why I cut off her head. (Actually I have been known to do is on quite a few occasions.) I think his basket is even more full than Darcy's. I love his many smiles.

Daddy checkin out her stash.

That evening we went to Lloyd and Kalynn's house to have an Easter egg hunt with Clint's family.

I promise Garrett was with us all day. It was just too cold to have him outside so he stayed hidden inside.

 Later that night we were all just visiting and the kids started play Poke a Pig all by themselves. It was pretty cute.

Then the next morning we did a little something at home. I can't remember what but I remember we did something. I know the kids got kites....hm....I guess that is just more incentive to keep up here. And I am not sure why I don't have any pictures either. Oh well.